Archives for January 2008

I recently had an order placed by a mother, Amy Arnold, who lives in Illinois. Her and her family are adopting a special little baby girl, Libi Faith Jai Qi, coming all the way from China. Amy ordered a ladybug because it is a significant symbol for Chinese babies coming to America. To personalize the painting I added Libi’s name and the Bible verse Job 12:9 “Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?” Libi has several health problems and today I received an email from Amy saying that Libi’s health has taken a turn for the worse, but this will speed up the time it was going to take to get into America. Please pray for this sweet little baby and her new family. You can read more of their story on Amy’s blog: www.libifaith.blogspot.com Amy it was a pleasure hearing your story and doing business with you. Thank You!

In a past post, I talked about my mom being the youngest of 12 siblings, so our family in huge…to say the least.  Twice a year we all get together for a reunion, one of those always being the Saturday after Christmas.  We visit, eat, talk, eat, get reaquainted, eat some more and have a Chinese auction.  I’m not real sure why it’s called a Chinese auction, that’s just what it’s been dubbed.  Anyways, how it works is everybody brings an item (it can be anything, but not crappy stuff), then you buy as many tickets as you would like ($1.00=4 tickets),  write your name on your tickets and then place your tickets in cups labled for the items you would like to have.   After we all have  enjoyed some GOOD food the auction begins.  Usually my Uncle David and Aunt Linda do the auction, but this year I took over for Uncle David.  We take each item brought individually, dump all the tickets for that item in a bag and then have a smaller cousin draw a ticket.  Whoever’s name is on the ticket drawn gets the item.  Do you see how this works?  Luck of the draw.  At the very end all the tickets for all the items are put into one big bag and we draw names for cash prizes, from the money that was used to buy tickets.  It is SO much fun.  So after my cousin Mike passed away a few years ago, he was an artist and always brought a painting for the auction, I decided I would take over for him and always bring a painting.  This year I painted two cactus’, similar to an old painting of Mike’s that adorns our bathroom.  It was a pretty hot item, along with a dog basket my cousin Rhonda brought.   When the ticket was drawn by my little cousin Matthew, Rebecca (one of my closest cousins) had won the cactus’.   It was a great time had  by all and I look forward to next year.   Below is the cactus painting and the big winner, Rebecca with Harper.

I recently got to welcome a new little nephew into the world, baby Jack. My brother Chris and sister-in-law Kim headed to a doctor’s appointment on December 5th at 10am, ended up checking into the hospital at 12 noon and at 2:45 little Jack arrived. It was so fast and I was actually about 10 minutes away from the hospital when he arrived. He is such a doll. When I saw him all bundled up I just cried. Nieces and nephews have always had such a tender place in my heart and Jack just touched my heart. He is also the first newborn I have held since Harper was born. He made Harper seem huge in size. Anyways, of course, in preparation for his coming I made him a couple of things. Kim, his mom, wanted a big J and a scripture painted. So I did just those things. I love his giant J. It turned out great and under his name at the top it says, “God is gracious”. That’s what “Jack” means. I love that. I also painted Luke 2:40 , “The boy grew up and became strong, filled with wisdom and God’s grace was on him.” Josh and myself have been praying for Jack for all his little nine months and we will continue to pray that he becomes a great man who loves God. He his going to be such a special little boy. Enjoy some adorable pictures of him and check out the art work I made just for him.